“Not philosophy and stuff?”

“Lord, no!” he said, shrugging his shoulders.  “It’s much worse.  It’s as though she despised—­” He paused again.

“Courting?” said his mother at last, her head against his shoulder.

“Well, anything of that sort, in comparison with art—­and making a career—­and earning money—­and things of that kind.  Oh, I daresay I’m a stupid ass!—­”

Lady Tatham laughed softly.

“You can buy all her pictures, Harry.”

“I don’t believe she’d like it a bit, if she knew!” he said, gloomily.

The young man’s chagrin and bewilderment were evident.  His mother could only guess at the causes.

“How long have you known her, Harry?”

“Just two months.”

Lady Tatham took him again by the shoulders, and looked into his face.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?  Do you want her?” she asked slowly.

“Yes—­but I shall never get her,” was the half desperate reply.

“Pooh!” she said, releasing him, after she had kissed him.  “We shall see.”

And straightway, with a wave of the hand as it were, she dismissed all thought of the Honourable Johns and Geralds.  Mrs. Penfold and her chatter sank out of sight and hearing.  She was her son’s champion—­against the world.

VI

It was the tenth day since the evening when Claude Faversham had been carried unconscious into Threlfall Tower, and the first one which anything like clearness of mind had returned to him.  Before that there had been passing gleams and perceptions, soon lost again in the delusions of fever, or narcotic sleep.  A big room—­strange faces—­pain—­a doctor coming and going—­intervals of misery following intervals of nothingness—­helplessness—­intolerable oppression—­horrible struggles with food—­horrible fear of being touched—­gradually, little by little, these ideas had emerged in consciousness.

Then had followed the first moments of relief—­incredibly sweet—­but fugitive, soon swallowed up in returning discomfort; yet lengthening, deepening, passing by degrees into a new and tremulous sense of security of a point gained and passed.  And at last on this tenth morning—­a still and cloudy morning of early June, he found himself suddenly fully awake, and as it seemed to him once more in possession of himself.  A dull, dumb anguish lay behind him, already half effaced; and the words of a psalm familiar at school and college ran idly through his mind:  “My soul hath escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler.”

“Where am I?” Not in a hospital.  Hospital ceilings are not adorned with wreaths and festoons in raised stucco, or with medallion groups of winged children playing with torches, or bows and arrows.

“I have a gem like that one,” he thought, sleepily.

“A genius with a torch.”

Then for a long time he was only vaguely conscious of more light than usual in the room—­of an open window somewhere—­of rustling leaves outside—­and of a chaffinch singing....